Comparative Analysis of Average Time of use of Home Appliances

Abstract

Greater appliance penetration has been associated with economic advancement, sophisticated lifestyles, improved safety, health and several environmental benefits. However, recent studies suggest that easier appliances acquisition also push reductions in the total time of appliance use, regardless of the gains achieved by technological advancement. With this respect, estimation of the total time of use of appliances is the first important step towards understanding such a trade-off. This study reports a summary of the average age of appliances in developing countries from Southeast Asia, Mexico and some developed countries, as well as a discussion of the relationship between income level and age of appliances using scatter plots of the summarised data. Six categories of appliances (personal computers, mobile phones, washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and TVs) were summarised from the literature, and the observed differences in the average age were hypothesised to have connection with income level and the appliance penetration rates. Average appliance age in a greater scale of income (using GNI per capita, PPP) also showed two main trends. Namely, a U-shaped and linear pattern in which the six appliances could be categorised.